Increasingly people obtain information electronically. Previously ubiquitous items such as paper maps, travel guide books and paper menus, as well as ticket agents and bank tellers, have now all but disappeared in favor of GPS powered applications, electronic informational kiosks, digital menus, and ATMs that dispense currency and mass transit tickets.
While such devices clearly represent advancement in technology, in practice they are only useful if they are understandable by the user. While the ability to use such technological devices to obtain information has become nearly universal and cross cultural, potential consumers of such informational devices are still divided by their native languages. Accordingly, for any informational device to be useful, it must be capable of interacting with users in more than one language. And in some contexts and some locales, the devices must be capable of many different languages.
Manually setting the language of any informational device can be tricky, confusing, and time consuming as the user might be required to navigate the never-ending menu selection, which in itself is in a different language to begin with. Considering that millions of people travel internationally each year to countries where languages other than their own are spoken, displayed, or written, it is a frequent occurrence that travelers are unable to understand the information that is provided, and are thereby unable to act appropriately. Accordingly, the mismatch between travelers and the information could be a big safety concern, as travelers may not understand evacuation routes or other warning messages, which are provided for their safety.
While the informational devices currently available have attempted to provide travelers a complete user experience, they have fallen short because of the foreign language barrier. Thus, while these units may be suitable for the particular purpose employed, or for general use, they would not be as suitable for the purposes of the present disclosure as disclosed hereafter.
In the present disclosure, where a document, act or item of knowledge is referred to or discussed, this reference or discussion is not an admission that the document, act or item of knowledge or any combination thereof was at the priority date, publicly available, known to the public, part of common general knowledge or otherwise constitutes prior art under the applicable statutory provisions; or is known to be relevant to an attempt to solve any problem with which the present disclosure is concerned.
While certain aspects of conventional technologies have been discussed to facilitate the present disclosure, no technical aspects are disclaimed and it is contemplated that the claims may encompass one or more of the conventional technical aspects discussed herein.